Moving-variable conditional-expectation convergence Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-11-05
Let be an increasing filtration and . Suppose almost surely and for one integrable random variable . Then
almost surely and in L1 space. To prove this, put . Then , , and is a nonnegative supermartingale whose expectation tends to zero. Its almost-sure limit is therefore zero. This bounds the moving-variable error; the conditional-expectation convergence along a filtration, extended from bounded to integrable variables by truncation, handles itself. Dominated convergence also makes the error tend to zero in L1 space.
A separate finite bound for each is insufficient. For a uniform random variable on , take and trivial . Then almost surely, but for every .
The martingale convergence theorem gives an almost-sure limit , because . The dominated convergence theorem also gives in .
To identify the limit, take . For some , , and for every ,
Passing to the limit preserves this equality. The sets for which form a monotone class containing the algebra , so the equality holds throughout . Since is -measurable, it is . This proves the conditional-expectation convergence along a filtration both almost surely and in .